In a nondescript factory in this small, wooded town, 10 giant machines worked around the clock last year to churn out 1.4 billion plastic corks, enough to circle the earth 1.33 times if laid end-to-end.

Unknown to most American wine drinkers, the plant's owner, Nomacorc LLC, has quietly revolutionized the 400-year-old wine-cork industry. Since the 1600s, wine has been bottled almost exclusively with natural cork, a porous material that literally grows on trees in Portugal, Spain and other Mediterranean lands.

But over the past 10 years, an estimated 20% of the bottle stopper market has been replaced by a new technology-plastic corks that cost between 2 and 20 cents apiece. More than one in 10 full-sized wine bottles sold worldwide now come with a Nomacorc plug, while another 9% or so come from other plastic cork makers. Screw caps took another 11% of the market.

'We infuriated the cork industry,' says Marc Noel, Nomacorc's chairman.

Plastic stoppers have so rattled the once dominant natural cork producers that they have gone on the defensive. This summer, Portugal, which accounts for 52% of the cork market, and the Portugese Cork Association, are bankrolling a 21 million ad and social media campaign to tout the superiority of natural cork over synthetics.

'It's easy for cork to be taken for granted-but its importance goes well beyond its tiny little size,' says Carlos de Jesus, head of international marketing for the Amorim Group, the world's largest cork producer in Santa Maria de Lamas, Portugal.

The story of how Nomacorc and other stopper upstarts broke the centuries-old cork monopoly is a lesson in how innovation, timing and hustle combined to exploit an opening in a once airtight market. It shows that any dominant industry can be vulnerable to competition, especially if it grows complacent about its position.

Cork was first adapted to close bottles of sparkling wine by a French Benedictine monk named Dom Perignon in the late 1600s. For the next four centuries, cork was considered the ultimate wine stopper: Its cellular structure makes it easy to compress into the neck of a bottle, where it expands to form a tight seal. Wine also benefits from 'breathing,' which is facilitated by cork's cell structure. An air-tight seal on a wine bottle can cause another set of problems and is one factor that limited the use of plastics and screw caps in the past.

Cork is harvested from the outer bark of cork oak trees, always by hand by workers using axes designed to slit the bark without harming the deeper layers of the tree. It can take two decades for a tree to grow old enough for the first harvest and subsequent culling is done only once every nine or ten years.

Despite its labor-intensive origins, cork remains cost effective. The most inexpensive corks start at 2 cents and go up to 1.5 euros for the finest varieties used in the best wines.

Although it was long known that cork could sometimes ruin the taste of wine, the problem wasn't well understood until the early 1980s. Then, chemists finally pinpointed the main cause of cork taint: The powerful chemical 2-4-6 Trichloroanisole or TCA. It can get into wine through contaminated cork, tainted barrels or pallets and render bottles undrinkable.

By the 1990s, retailers and wineries were clamoring for a solution to wine taint but the cork industry didn't respond. 'No industry with 95% to 97% market share is going to see its propensity to listen increase-and that's what happened to us,' says Mr. de Jesus from Amorim.

The outcry was just the opening needed by Mr. Noel, a Belgian immigrant who in 1998 began making what he calls 'corcs,' he says in part to avoid lawsuits from cork producers, in his North Carolina plastics factory.

Mr. Noel, whose company had specialized in extruded plastics such as pool noodles, named the new business Nomacorc LLC. He eventually built a new, highly automated factory that does nothing but churn out the plastic stoppers, 157 million a month.

The business took off as wineries, desperate for closures that wouldn't cause cork taint, lined up to buy his product. Nomacorc now has plants on three continents, which produce 2 billion corks a year.

What Mr. Noel and other plastics innovators realized was that they could use new technology to make a new kind of closure. Plastic corks had been tried in the past-but were largely rejected because they were made of solid plastic, which can be difficult to insert and extract and can leave gaps around the edges that are prone to leaks.

Mr. Noel's innovation was to make corks with two types of extruded plastic: A firm inner core that would hold the shape of the cork and a spongy exterior that would fit better. The new corks had the feel of natural cork and were easier to remove with a cork screw, which addressed a key consumerobjection. Not only that, but they could be printed to look like cork or made in fanciful colors. Nomacorc holds 30 patents on its products and the techniques to make them.

'We changed the way winemakers think about making and closing wine,' says Mr. Noel.

Timothy Aeppel

• circle [´sə:kəl] n.圆圈 v.环绕；盘旋 (初中英语单词)
• international [,intə´næʃənəl] a.国际的，世界的 (初中英语单词)
• opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
• competition [,kɔmpi´tiʃən] n.比赛；竞争 (初中英语单词)
• structure [´strʌktʃə] n.结构，构造；组织 (初中英语单词)
• factor [´fæktə] n.因素；原动力；要素 (初中英语单词)
• harvest [´hɑ:vist] n.&v.收获；收割 (初中英语单词)
• effective [i´fektiv] a.有效的；有力的 (初中英语单词)
• chemical [´kemikəl] a.化学的 n.化学制品 (初中英语单词)
• solution [sə´lu:ʃən] n.解答；解决；溶解 (初中英语单词)
• respond [ri´spɔnd] v.回答；响应；有反应 (初中英语单词)
• desperate [´despərit] a.拼死的；绝望的 (初中英语单词)
• objection [əb´dʒekʃən] n.反对；异议；缺点 (初中英语单词)
• billion [´biljən] num.万亿 (高中英语单词)
• literally [´litərəli] ad.逐字地；实际上 (高中英语单词)
• portugal [´pɔ:tjugəl] n.葡萄牙 (高中英语单词)
• mediterranean [,meditə´reiniən] n.地中海 a.地中海的 (高中英语单词)
• campaign [kæm´pein] n.战役；行动 vi.从军 (高中英语单词)
• producer [prə´dju:sə] n.生产者；演出人 (高中英语单词)
• monopoly [mə´nɔpəli] n.垄断(权)；专利事业 (高中英语单词)
• exploit [´eksplɔit] n.功绩 vt.剥削；开发 (高中英语单词)
• ultimate [´ʌltimit] a.最终的 n.终极；顶点 (高中英语单词)
• compress [kəm´pres] v.紧压；压缩；缩小 (高中英语单词)
• limited [´limitid] a.有限(制)的 (高中英语单词)
• subsequent [´sʌbsikwənt] a.其次的；其后的 (高中英语单词)
• immigrant [´imigrənt] a.外国来的移民 (高中英语单词)
• insert [in´sə:t, ´insə:t] vt.插入；夹入 n.插入物 (高中英语单词)
• extract [ik´strækt, ´ekstrækt] vt.取出；摘录 n.精华 (高中英语单词)
• consumer [kən´sju:mə] n.消费者；用户 (高中英语单词)
• wooded [´wudid] a.多树林的 (英语四级单词)
• exclusively [ik´sklu:sivli] ad.独有地；排外地 (英语四级单词)
• apiece [ə´pi:s] ad.每个，每件，每人 (英语四级单词)
• dominant [´dɔminənt] a.统治的；占优势的 (英语四级单词)
• defensive [di´fensiv] a.&n.防御(的) (英语四级单词)
• superiority [su:piəri´ɔriti, sju:-] n.优越，卓越 (英语四级单词)
• hustle [´hʌsəl] v.猛挤；催促 n.乱堆 (英语四级单词)
• outcry [´autkrai] n.喊叫；强烈抗议 (英语四级单词)
• belgian [´beldʒən] n.&a.比利时人(的) (英语四级单词)
• eventually [i´ventʃuəli] ad.最后，终于 (英语四级单词)
• exterior [ik´stiəriə] n.&a.外表(的) (英语四级单词)
• innovation [,inə´veiʃən] n.改革；革新；创新 (英语六级单词)
• inexpensive [,inik´spensiv] a.廉价的 (英语六级单词)